


All the Rumors are True

by liadan14



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur enjoys walking Camden, Arthur is Bad at Feelings, Dom Cobb Being an Asshole, Eames is okay at them, Eames likes his American smile, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-28 00:03:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20416565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: Distantly, Arthur is aware he's gesticulating far too enthusiastically as he describes the minor design differences between two assault rifles and why it was important to the job to get the model just right. He trails off mid-sentence, aware that Eames is staring at him, grinning, looking bizarrely more rumpledandmore attractive than ever.“Darling,” Eames says, “I fancy you.”





	All the Rumors are True

The first time he says it, Eames is very drunk. It is three years, four months, one week and approximately twelve bad decisions before Cobb talks Arthur into the inception job. Mal is still alive and lovely, and she has been plying both Eames and Arthur with alcohol all night, because she is too pregnant to drink herself. Arthur later writes it off as hindsight that he finds the hungry gleam in her eyes as she toasts to their successful extraction disconcerting.

She drifts of eventually, but the damage she has wrought in hard cider and amaretto shots cannot be erased. Distantly, Arthur is aware he's gesticulating far too enthusiastically as he describes the minor design differences between two assault rifles and why it was important to the job to get the model just right. It’s Mal’s fault, she started this conversation. He trails off mid-sentence, aware that Eames is staring at him, grinning, looking bizarrely more rumpled _and_ more attractive than ever. 

“Darling,” Eames says, “I fancy you.”

-

They don’t speak of this for the next two years.

They’re working a job out of Mumbai, one of the early, grueling, post-Mal jobs that mean Arthur does all the legwork and Cobb mopes. It’s late summer and Eames is miserable because the climate just does not suit him. Arthur is happy as a pig in shit, because he’s used to East Coast summers and the air in New York feeling like soup in his lungs. Possibly he’s also dealing better because he gets to stay in the air-conditioned loft they’re working from and Eames has to go out and do recon.

In a fit of uncharacteristic sympathy, Arthur picks up a tub of Eames’ godawful favorite ice cream on a Wednesday when the humidity clambers over 90%. 

“Darling,” Eames groans as he shovels obscenely large spoonfuls into his mouth, “have I told you how much I fancy you? And this ice cream. I really fancy this ice cream. We’ll be married in Barbados at sunset.”

Arthur overcorrects and spends the next three days being especially snappish and anal-retentive.

When Eames leaves, he tells Arthur he deserves better and Cobb is insane.

Arthur knows he’s not wrong.

-

Eames actually asks him, once, why he follows Cobb around. It’s only months before the cosmic shift of the inception job. “You could have a life, somewhere,” Eames points out.

Arthur, damned by his own loyalty, shrugs. “Not sure I have the imagination for that,” he says, needlessly pointed.

The job deteriorates soon after, and Mal slits Eames’ stomach up from crotch to breastbone with a stiletto knife. Arthur shoots him in the head before he can choke on his own blood, and then dies slowly himself in the dreamscape, Mal’s knife lodged in his back and Cobb nowhere to be found.

Eames has already left when he wakes up.

Arthur doesn’t dream anymore, but he does wake up violently nauseous from the memories and spends the next hour retching over the rickety toilet bowl in their crappy headquarters. 

He finds the note around dawn, trying to stomach black tea and crackers and come up with a plan to get them out of this mess, tucked into the pocket of his suit jacket.

_I can imagine you better places_.

Arthur’s never seen Eames’ handwriting, but he’s sure.

-

Cobb holds a pompous speech at Arthur about getting along with Eames this time before he goes to pick Eames up in Mombasa. Vaguely, Arthur registers that Cobb for some reason thinks Eames left last time because he and Arthur were always at each other’s throats, when in fact Arthur has always likened their little professional spats to some very drawn-out foreplay. He wonders what Eames is doing in Mombasa. The weather can’t be doing him any favors.

He wonders why on earth Eames would ever want to work with them again, and remembers in technicolor how Eames had looked, fuzzy the edges and wearing an awful teal shirt, saying, “Darling, I fancy you.”

Then he remembers he’s an idiot and tries to stop thinking about Eames.

Except.

Except, then Eames follows him home from the airport like a cat that’s decided it wants adopting. He pays for the cab ride. Spreads himself out on Arthur’s couch and waits while Arthur unpacks, starts his laundry, orders pizza. 

“Are you done, then?” Eames asks.

“Done? I mean, I still have to put stuff in the dryer,” Arthur starts.

“Done following Cobb. Done almost dying.”

Arthur stares at Eames, considers what he would do if Cobb came calling again tomorrow, the police hot on his heels, and says, “he doesn’t need me anymore.”

“And if he did?”

Arthur considers spending another two years on the run, drinking bitter, stale coffee and living off of whatever fast food is palatable.

“I’m done,” he says. “I can’t do it anymore.”

“Good,” Eames says.

“Why?”

“Well,” Eames says, “I rather fancy you, and I don’t want to share you with him. He’s bad for your health.”

“You keep saying that,” Arthur says. “I think it’s time you put your money where your mouth is.”

Eames grins, wide and toothy. “_Darling_,” he says.

-

Arthur is almost certain he never told Eames what it does to him, Eames’ relentless Briticisms, how he likes to replay that very first “darling, I fancy you” in his mind because it makes his belly go liquid, but maybe Eames knows. 

Maybe he knows, because he seems to take his cue from day one to utterly forget Arthur’s real name and refer to him only as “darling”.

As in, “darling, you’re such a ponce,” when he drags Eames suit shopping before the both go off to their first normal job interviews in a decade.

As in, “good morning, darling,” when he comes up behind Arthur in the kitchen and wraps his arms around Arthur’s middle, effectively blocking access to the coffeemaker.

As in, “just like that, darling,” when he’s got his legs up around Arthur’s waist, wide-eyed and panting and making Arthur give it to him just like he wants it for as long as he wants it.

Arthur had always been aware this was an option, from that first evening onward. First he was chickenshit about it, then it just never seemed fair, with Cobb on the run and himself following. He closed the door in his mind when Eames wasn’t there to prop it open, and returned all Eames’ overtures with sarcasm. He’s not sure why Eames is even still here.

At the same time, he finds he loves this. Loves that they both find jobs in town, Arthur as a financial consultant, Eames in the art department for one of the few studios not owned by Disney. Loves that they come home in the evenings and talk about their days, that he gets frantic texts from Eames asking if he needs “milk or biccies”. Loves that Eames cooks him disgusting fried food and calls it weird things like “bubble and squeak” or “bangers”. Loves that he gets to touch Eames now. He takes advantage as much as he can. Eames accuses him of being a secret cuddler, but it was never a secret, and Eames loves it, too, so Arthur ignores him.

He lets Eames just keep living with him, never even really considers that it might be a better idea to not live together right away, because it just seems patently ridiculous. Eames has seen him bleed and die a hundred different ways; he can see Arthur when his hair isn’t styled, when he’s wearing glasses. He can come to baseball games with Arthur and buy him peanuts and complain about it being undignified cricket. 

It takes Arthur almost by surprise when he finds a year has passed.

“Darling,” Eames is saying, “I was thinking we could take a trip together. I haven’t been home in a while, what d’you say. You fancy a trip to London?”

Arthur isn’t stupid. 

Arthur knows that Eames lets him just…not talk about their relationship. Because it’s easier, and Arthur lacks the words, and the trust in other people, to put himself out there. It’s still humbling, every time, to allow Eames to so casually waltz in and spread his cards out right in front of Arthur and ask for what he wants.

Eames was always actually terrible at poker.

“Yeah,” Arthur says. “Yeah, I’d fancy that.”

“You’d fancy that,” Eames repeats, and he’s laughing a bit.

-

They fly into Heathrow on a Sunday morning, and Arthur’s body remembers international travel better than he thought, because he bullies Eames into showing him around before they take a nap, so they don’t entirely fuck up their sleeping schedules on the very first day.

So Eames dutifully takes him out, shows him a few of the tourist sites but adamantly refuses to watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace, because “it’s gauche, darling, and everyone will think we’re tourists.”

“I am,” Arthur points out. 

“Nonsense,” Eames says, “you’re an honored guest.”

He meets Eames’ brother the next day. 

He introduces himself by his first name, like a normal person. It’s James. Arthur knows what Eames’ first name is, it’s on the lease of the apartment he made Eames co-sign but didn’t really talk about any further with, and it’s on the tax returns he helped Eames file because he’s not letting the IRS come to his home.

He has never used it. 

But there James Eames is, calling him by it like it’s the most normal thing he could do. Which, of course it is, his own brother wouldn’t call him by his last name. 

James and Eames catch up, discuss their parents (whom Eames calls every fortnight, and who definitely know about Arthur, because they always send greetings), James’ wife and children, and eventually, international politics, which is the part of the conversation Arthur bows back into. He unclenches gradually, slowly, when he realizes that James doesn’t give a shit what he calls Eames.

He asks, later, in the quiet of their hotel room. “Should I be calling you Phillip?”

Eames, who had been nearly asleep, snuffles closer and slings an arm around Arthur. “You can call me whatever you like, darling.”

“What would you like?”

Eames sighs. “I don’t much mind what you call me.”

“Eames, you…”

“Hmm?”

“Never mind.”

They go to a rugby match with Eames’ friends from university (“Uni, darling, it’s uni”) the next day. Arthur is vaguely entranced by the level of a) brutality and b) ass-grabbing on display.

Eames’ uni friends all call him Eames, or Eamesy. Arthur is not at all sure he should take pointers from them, because they all appear to go by alarming and ridiculous nicknames, such as Binkers, Snuff and Daniel.

By the next Saturday, Arthur realizes Eames has been working him up to meeting his parents, because that’s where they find themselves Saturday afternoon, in front of a sprawling London mansion that Eames refers to as the “town house”. Arthur knew he was rich, but he didn’t know what that meant in English terms.

But Eames’ parents aren’t the British caricature of distant aristocrats he’s expecting. He doesn’t know why he expects that, because both Eames and James turned out fine, but it fits his image, so he’s a little shocked by the warmth with which he’s greeted by both Eames’ mother and father. They clearly dote on Eames and clearly have no idea what he’s been doing for a living for the last few years.

In fact, they credit Arthur with convincing Eames to “settle down” at last and stop his “gallivanting all over the world”.

They play scrabble. 

They eat curry together.

Eames’ mother regales them with an endless slew of gossip about people no one besides her knows.

Eames is so unmistakably happy to see them that Arthur feels like an asshole.

“Why aren’t we staying with them?” he asks, later.

“I thought that’d be a bit much.”

“Eames,” Arthur says around the lump in his throat. “You didn’t have to wait all week to see them and stay in a hotel just for me. I’d be fine with spending more time with them. I know you miss them.”

Eames laughs. “Darling, you were terrified just meeting my brother. I couldn’t foist everyone on you at once. Besides, spending all week with my parents is too much even for me.”

Arthur looks at his hands. “You have to sacrifice too much for me.”

Eames looks flabbergasted.

“We could be living here. I’ve no reason to live in California. You love it here. You miss it here. You deserve a lot more than someone who can’t even call you by your first name.”

“Cobb’s in California,” Eames says. “So is Ariadne, now.”

“We haven’t seen them since…”

“Maybe it’s time to change that.”

“And nearly no one calls me Phillip anyway.”

“Eames…”

“Arthur. I chose to follow you home, and I chose to stay there. Trust me on that?”

“I just think you could be doing better,” Arthur says mulishly.

Eames cups his hands carefully, and he’s a ridiculous man with a ridiculous shirt on, but Arthur still feels stupidly comforted. “But I fancy _you_,” he says.

Arthur blushes, awfully, his whole face and neck and most of his chest going red.

“What?”

“I just like when you say that,” Arthur admits.

-

Arthur realizes maybe a week later that Eames probably means he loves Arthur when he says that.

**Author's Note:**

> I was talking to a friend about how there needs to be a fanvid of Arthur/Eames set to Taylor Swift's London Boy. Then this happened when I was supposed to be working.
> 
> Ariadne starts hanging out with them regularly after this ends, btw. She kind of lives on Arthur's couch when she's around and she and Arthur become best drinking buddies. Eames loves this development, especially when Taylor Swift's _Lover_ comes out. Ariadne and Arthur start belting this song every time he comes in the room and it makes Eames happy. This is kind of why Cobb doesn't hang out with them much, and also because Eames is still kind of pissed at him. (tbh no one is sure if Cobb even knows they're dating because he still sometimes tells Arthur he should be nicer to Eames).
> 
> Oh also I was never thaaat far into this fandom so sorry if I screwed up the timeline.


End file.
